Alec James was born in Bournemouth and joined his first band as a drummer at the age of fifteen. The band was called ‘THE CORVETTES’ and they played in local youth clubs and church halls.

After a couple of years the line up changed and with a powerful new brass section they became the ‘PALMER JAMES GROUP’. They were one of the mainstays of the blues and soul movement on the South coast. Towards the end of the sixties the band went their separate ways with members joining acts as diverse as Supertramp, King Crimson and Brian Ferry. After a short rest Alec started a new four piece called ‘CALENDAR’. In this band Alec became lead vocalist whilst still retaining the drum seat.

After this Alec worked as a musician in several line ups, depping here there and everywhere. He then formed his own band called ‘MIRAGE’ playing mainly hotel residencies until 1992 when he stopped doing regular gigs. It was during the ’MIRAGE’ phase that he gave up drumming to concentrate on singing.

Since then he has played many charity gigs as ‘MATT VINYL AND THE DECORATORS’ and sings with the ‘SHAFTESBURY SWING BAND’, a sixteen piece line up playing big band and swing standards.
Over the last years or so he has been concentrating on songwriting and recording and his latest album ‘Blues From The Dean Delta’ has just been released on independent record label Faustuss International. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.